Jakob Wassermann - My First Wife

I asked myself more and more why it was that I always submitted to this will. It’s not that I am will-less myself; and weak-willed only inasmuch as my nature is opposed to pointless exertions. So, once it was spring and we had to leave the flat with the yellow room, I moved with her to somewhere at the back of beyond. The new place was an inn called the Hermitage, since (and deservedly) disappeared off the surface of the earth. It was a grim and sad abode, much worse than Signor Pancrazio’s hole in the wall. It reminded me of the murderous inn in fairy tales, where the offed guests were interred in the cellar. It had one advantage: it was cheap. That was what decided Ganna. But she was also fed up with her sisters’ condescension and even more with the hellish dealings with the servants. So, it was up sticks for the romantic ruin. Ganna said it was high time she returned to her higher calling. I agreed with her. I thought it was high time too. I didn’t know exactly what she had in mind, but I let that go.

I worked in a gloomy cell that got wet when it rained, and when it was fine I heard the trippers carousing in the beer garden; and all the time I had Ganna’s squabbling with the nursemaid to distract me. What was it all for, I would ask myself periodically, to be living like an outlaw? A bank account, I thought, is obviously intended to be a type of conserve, like foie gras ; not something anyone eats fresh. As for the nursemaid, Oprcek by name, she was a confirmed lunatic. She put the boy to sleep by singing him obscene ditties, and when Ganna quarrelled with her she would curtsey to her with a giggle, hoick her skirts up round her knees and mutter Czech oaths under her breath.

I remember one particular night when I was woken by my son’s piercing wail. Ganna flutters and flusters round the room, and makes up some camomile tea by the light of a candle. The Oprcek woman holds the pillow with the infant on it in her upraised arms and performs a sort of Negro minstrel dance with her hideous singing. Ganna begs me to call a doctor. It’s a long way to the nearest doctor, but my tiredness is no match for Ganna’s fears. I pull on some clothes and go out into the night. And while I walk down into the village, I am taken by a vague and bitter yearning that has me reeling through the stormy, rainy night … I never forgot that time.

THE NEW FACE

In autumn we finally settled. We moved into the upper storey of an imposing villa on the edge of the 13th district. Furniture, crockery, curtains and lamps needed to be bought. The bank account was ransacked. Ganna spent sleepless nights.

The house belonged to an old couple by the name of Ohnegroll.* Never was a name less deserved. The man was deceitful and malignant, and his wife was a termagant. Brightly coloured ceramic gnomes stood around in the flower beds in woolly hats. I had such a fury against these gnomes, it was as though they were the ones who had made off with my money. An attic room was my study, where I sometimes slept. From there I had a view over a moth-eaten meadow, where a carousel went round in the daytime, to hurdy-gurdy accompaniment. But in the evenings and at night it was eerily quiet, and I worked all through the winter undisturbed.

When spring came I felt restless. Ganna didn’t want to leave the baby, so I got in touch with Konrad Fürst and we headed south. In Ferrara my companion ran out of money; by the time we got home, he owed me 700 crowns. Barely a week later, Fürst met me in a café and begged me almost in tears to let him have another 1,000; it was a gambling debt, he had given his word of honour and if he didn’t have the money by morning he would have no option but to shoot himself. I responded coolly that I didn’t think it was his place to get into all this honorious behaviour; if he was in trouble, then I’d help him out, but I didn’t think it was advisable for us to see each other for a while. It was a discreet sort of break with him. Fürst’s fatuous lifestyle and his megalomania had got on my nerves more and more.

As I was expecting a sizeable payment from my publisher, I thought I’d be able to plug the hole in the bank account before Ganna found out about it. Unfortunately the payment was delayed, and I was forced to tell Ganna what had happened. I was prepared for an outburst of rage, but not for the torrent of bitterness and indignation that followed. To begin with, she just looked at me speechlessly. ‘Well, really, Alexander,’ she stammered with blue lips, and then a second time, ‘Really, Alexander …’ like someone whose ideals are crumbing away before their very eyes. With stomping strides and tiny feet she walked up and down, yanked the tablecloth off the table, thrust the chairs out of her way with her knees, ground her little teeth, pressed her tiny hands to her temples and chuntered away to herself: some friend; nasty piece of work; outrageous, taking advantage of someone’s kind-heartedness when he has children of his own to feed; well, she wasn’t going to stand for it; she was going to write a letter to the slick con-trickster, and one that he wouldn’t stick on his mirror …

She had every reason to be angry. After all, she was economizing the soul out of her body, turned every crown over three times before spending it, haggled with market traders over vegetables, wouldn’t buy herself a new pair of shoes until the old ones were falling apart. Fine. But she still shouldn’t have carried on like that. The wrong I thought I had committed suddenly didn’t feel wrong any more. Even though she shortly after apologized to me in tears for her vehemence, a sting remained which drilled itself into my flesh. I had seen a new face to her. It was even there in her charming, innocent smile, the new face.

AT THE CONCERT

In the same way as strands floating in a murky liquid end up coalescing in strange patterns, so the continual strife gradually made Ganna’s life opaque, and her relations with people and things unpredictable. There were recurring scenes which ended up forming a pattern. I bought tickets for an orchestral concert. It starts at seven. You need to allow three-quarters of an hour for the ride into town. At a quarter to six I go to Ganna to tell her to get ready. She is lying dreamily on the terrace; in her right hand a book on mysticism and the Pre-Raphaelites, and in her left the usual pencil. ‘Oh, just a minute,’ she gives back, startled, drops the book on the lead flashing where it remains, to be found sodden with rain the following day, and scuttles into the bedroom. Ten minutes pass, twenty; I’m in hat and coat looking at my watch all the time, then I pluck up courage and go and see what’s keeping Ganna. She’s standing in the bathroom, half-dressed, washing her hair, now, at ten past six. I am furious. Ganna asks me not to rush her, she’s going as fast as she can. She’s the victim of unlucky circumstances. Her best intentions are crossed by bad chances. Everyone tramples around on poor Ganna. Even me. Sighing and groaning and wailing, she’s finished by half past six. Just a quick dash to the nursery, intense farewells with Ferry, some rushed parting instructions (because we do rely on her) to the nursemaid (don’t ask me which number nursemaid), and we’re running to catch the tram. We stand around waiting for the next ten minutes, Ganna with offended expression and pout. No sooner has she taken her seat than she realizes she’s left behind her little purse with her opera glasses and her money. Reproaches. The only reason it happens is because she’s been ‘rushed’. She thinks she doesn’t ‘deserve’ it. When she’s trying ‘so’ hard. She complains and complains. I feel embarrassed in front of the other people in the tram; Ganna is quite unembarrassed in front of the other people in the tram. That’s part of her sense of superiority. Why do I answer back to her? Why don’t I keep my mouth shut? I feel sorry for her, that’s why. She’s tormented. I want to help her get over it. I don’t like it when she complains and whines. Perhaps it’s her magic arts that make me so yielding. Arrived at the concert hall, we are made to wait for a break in the performance. I am still reasoning with her, trying to prove to her that she’s in the wrong, a sure-fire way of confirming her in her self-righteousness. Her anger continues as an empty babbling. Then she’s sitting down in her seat with a rapt expression. Music affects her like strong drink. I’ve understood that she’s about as musical as a piece of driftwood, that she doesn’t have the least understanding of the structure of a composition, the assembly, the interlocking of various motifs, the worth or worthlessness, content or vapidity of the whole. It would be a simple matter to sell her an operetta overture of the better sort as, say, Bruckner, and she would start to gush; but all that doesn’t prevent me from believing in the sincerity of her response, the genuineness of her emotion. Ganna is like a part of me. I can’t behave otherwise than as I do; if I did, it would be the end of me. Of course there are times when the sight of her intoxication offends my modesty and my judgement; then I need only remember with what flaming awe, what passionate support she listens to me, hour after hour, when I read aloud to her from my work, how I feel the sympathetic beat of her blood, and her whole being is enthusiastic assent. I like her drunkenness, then; so must I damn her when in another context she seems merely — disinhibited? But surely then everything would be deception and pretence.